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Marketing Tips for Launching a New Website

Tomorrow we’re launching a new website at The Ad Managers. It’s a directory of Canadian roofing companies which is most likely nothing like the website you’ve built, but regardless there are a few universal key steps to take when launching any new site and here they are:

Ensure the site is loading correctly. Open it in a couple of different browsers and check it’s load time with a tool like GTmetrix to ensure everything is quick and google/user friendly.

Create a sitemap for your site. Ideally you’re using wordpress or another crm. If it’s wordpress then you can use a plugin like Yoast SEO which generates a sitemap automatically for you (with Yoast it’s at http://yoursite.com/sitemap_index.xml)

Add Google Analytics to the website. It’s a quick step which can help you diagnose and potential browsing or other errors down the road.

Submit/verify it on Google Webmaster Tools. This gets it on Google’s radar and allows you to set the primary domain (if you want www. or a bare url) and the targeted country if there is one. Once the site is verified, be sure to click into it and add a sitemap.

Submit/verify it on Bing Webmaster Tools. It’s essentially the same as Google’s above but a bit more buggy.

Sign up for social profiles. This might be reaching a little beyond just a core website setup, but it’s an absolutely essential thing to do both to protect your site’s brand, and to lock down some authoritative high quality links to help with SEO. I’d recommend setting up profiles on at least:

Twitter

Facebook

Google+

Linkedin

Add Meta Tags. This is something which many will consider to be an SEO thing, but honestly who’s going to want to click on a search listing with a non-descript title or a gibberish description… and sure it’ll help with SEO.

If you follow all those steps your site will have a solid foundation to build upon.
Best of luck and if you have any questions don’t hesitate to ask using the comment field below.